Few people act as if they believe me when I tell them this: I have rarely been happy in my life. I know other people who felt they have problems with depression, but even they did not seem to understand when I would say, “I’ve never been happy.” One friend took a rebirthing class, and reported she experienced deep happiness, the kind she had only felt in childhood. I must have been an anxious baby, anxious in the womb. Happiness was a word I had no context for. Even in the most pleasant, the most fortunate of circumstances, I skittered on the surface of enjoyment, with my footing unsure on the edge of a chasm. Another friend in the upheavals of peri-menopause chemical surges said, “Every time I go out the door, I feel like I have stage fright. I don’t see how people live with this.” My friend was often angry or wary. I had not noticed happiness to be her dominant trait, but even she had known life without that amorphous cloud in the sacral chakra. I was astounded. Perhaps happiness was not an emotion, like the emperor’s new clothes, everyone else was faking.
The search for happiness has been the impetus for my entire squandered life. First I wanted to fit in the bosom of my family, then be a best friend, then have a boyfriend, interspersed and followed by self-help and how-tos, then spirituality, seeking the God Who Would Save Me from Myself. Perhaps I equated love and competence with happiness, but somehow, no matter how I was petted or praised, both seemed illusively out of my grasp, perhaps because I was constantly dancing for approval from someone else, while myopically focused on my frantic steps.
After years of pleading, bargaining, practicing, failing, maintaining, I began to have breakthroughs. On occasions, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, I was not unhappy. I was actually timorously optimistic. Sometimes, usually with someone who was in a state more angsted than mine, I was confident and calm. But not happy. I simply had no reference for happy.
Then one day while I was taking care of my paralyzed father, a stranger in a check-out line began to berate me, telling me how stupid I was. In my frazzled and frumpy existence, I had no trouble believing him, but I had been working on the concept of peace, the peace that passeth understanding, and I just wanted to pay for my goods and take my fatigue home. I had to call on God, and not very nicely, to handle the situation. Then a strange thing happened. My tormentor gleamed like honey. The store was suffused in an amber glow, a heavenly golden light. And from somewhere, not from me, but like a sea that had birth me, Laughter…. I have no words for it. I, the angry young man, his harried mother, the weary check-out clerk, the shoppers, we were all loved and supported by Laughter, and we were of It and It was of us. Nothing else changed, except I was at peace, and I was happy. I was of Happiness, Who had just shared a marvelous joke with me.
Though there were good moments after, Happiness did not reappear until two years later when I was trapped in the car with a woman with whom I had formed a contentious bond, a woman with whom I spoke more sharply than any other person in my life, a woman whom I was constantly telling she was Wrong. If I had not had hardening of the arteries, I would have left most encounters with her with a migraine. Still we were called together, and on this day, my spiritual lesson was “God’s will for you is perfect happiness.” Like magnets , we had been drawn into a difference of opinion that finally resulted in war. “You,” I hissed to the God of Lies who promised me happiness, “You need to fix this, because I cannot,” because she and I were broken, and even if we separated, we would be infected and could not expel the deadly toxin.
Then she spoke softly, discussing the meal we had just shared. And when I heard the music of her voice, I also noticed the amber glow enveloping us. I felt the leap of Laughter. I knew, once again, I was home, and I was glad. My friend, the Saint, and I could not go back and repair the damage done, for in that instant there was no damage. There was only Now.
The Laughter and Heaven’s glow ebbed, but I carried its memory everywhere, for I now knew happiness was real, and I expected to meet it again. Several months later I was sitting on my couch, watching a silly movie with my husband, when I noticed a weird feeling. Something was different. I checked out my body, part by part, until I realized the cloud of anxiety in my belly wasn’t present. Then I recognized the amber glow. Nothing was happening, and I was happy.
It lasted for a day. The following afternoon I felt something was slightly amiss. I realized I was missing the anxiety I had lived with for fifty-four years, as if a difficult family member had suddenly disappeared even though nobody had been fighting. By night, my sacral chakra was cloudy again. This was not what I wanted, even if somehow I had chosen it, chosen it in the womb, or some other life time ago, by some habitual action.
But I have learned, happiness is not the result of anything I do, or anything anyone else can do for me. It is the Eternal Source of my being. God is Love. God is Happiness. And though I have chosen to think I have been the source of my own happiness, though I’ve always failed miserably in achieving it, I can choose again, every day. I can choose to let Someone choose for me. And In Love, in Laughter, I know I am at Home, where Peace passeth all understanding. One day I will know it, forever.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Little Awakenings
4-19-2005
In the German movie, Mostly Martha, Martha, the second-best chef in Hamburg, obsesses on her work to keep the emotional world at bay. All of that changes when her sister dies, and Martha must provide her orphaned niece with the love the child requires in order to heal. But healing love is unlimited, and Martha is unwillingly included in its cure. In the final scene, Martha’s therapist has cooked a dessert for Martha, following her instructions, but his effort falls short of perfection. “Did you do this, add this, stir just so?” Martha asks, trying to pinpoint the error. Finally she addresses the sugar. He had not use the kind she suggested. “You can taste the sugar I used?” he says. “Of course not,” she says. “I can taste the sugar you didn’t use.” And as it is with sugar, so it is with love. If my life is not quite sweet, perhaps I am tasting the love I haven’t used.
4-14-05
Pallets
Miss Fran wanted pallets for her garage and basement. Being twenty years younger and having truck access made me the get-it-girl. I quickly became pallet aware: Sears, Wal-Mart, the grocery store, the in-business plant nursery and the nursery for sale. Sears had pallets, sometimes, on Tuesday afternoons only, and we would have to come and get them before the mysterious pallet man swooped them up. Wal-Mart, the grocery store, and open plant nursery used theirs (those things cost twenty dollars apiece, the grocery man said). The For Sale telephone number on the closed nursery was wrong. I remembered years ago when all the pallets were free, behind every building to be snatched by teen-agers for bonfires; but no more. Finally the deli had five wooden pallets and two plastic ones, and the skinny young manager helped me load them because his momma would be mad at him if he didn’t. Other than being slightly taken back I was old enough to be somebody’s momma’s concern, I had netted the prize.
But I remained pallet aware. The neighbor who owned the auto parts store said she got them in on occasion, and was always happy to give them away. The For Sale sign and the pallets disappeared from the closed plant nursery. Today I went to the lumber yard. Back in the corner were haphazard stacks of pallets, plus some littering the edge of one of the tin buildings.
“Do you sell those pallets?” I asked the check-out clerk.
“No,” he said. “If you want some, ask Travis. He’s not here right now.”
Fran doesn’t need more pallets, but I’ve seen my lesson for today. If you want something, keep looking. Somewhere it’s waiting for you, in abundance.
4-16-05
Strawberries
For a while I’ve been eyeing the strawberries in the grocery. They are big and red and look very eatable. Next to them is a flat cake called Bavarian sponge cake. The package of strawberries is huge, and I have resisted. Until yesterday, in honor of delicious spring weather, when I went whole hog…strawberries, Bavarian sponge cake and whipped cream. After I got home, I waited until late afternoon. Then I sliced the berries, sprinkled them with a tiny bit of sugar (even though the berries were so large, and not real juicy, they were sweet), layered them on the cake, and topped it off with whipped cream. I could barely wait until I was seated to munch my first bite. And the cake was dry, tasteless and crumbly. Which brings us to today’s lesson…if you choose a poor foundation, no matter how much lush sweetness you layer on top, you’re going to be disappointed in the end.
4-16-07
Awareness
After my dad was paralyzed and we came home from the hospital, we badly needed a ramp. I cannot now remember how long it took us to get one. The men from his church group were going to build it, then the carpenter down the street. I read everything I could get my hands on concerning ramps. All I remember now is that the incline should be one inch of rise for each twelve inches of height, which means, I think, if your front door is two feet off the ground, you must have 24 feet of ramp. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of ramp. We finally hired the lumber yard to build it, and it was beautiful and liberating. My father’s been dead for two years now, the house sold, the wonderful ramp dismantled, but to this day I admire the fine slope of a well-built ramp.
When we cleared out my parents’ home of fifty years, I scrounged packing boxes for months. It’s still hard pass a good box wasted in the trash.
Recently it’s been pallets that I’ve been hunting for a friend. Though she’ll never require another pallet in this lifetime, I now note the location of every pallet I pass.
Busted up concrete. Yep. My neighbor landscaped her walks and flower beds with slabs of concrete, and I decided to do the same. While I don’t have the tenacity of my neighbor, I do have piles of concrete I’ve begged, and I think the guy who helped me in my yard a while, stole. Don’t ask. He’s not working for the city any more.
The church two blocks over is tearing down their original sanctuary, and I walk past it every day. A couple of days ago, I saw an amazing sight, and when I passed my neighbor’s house, she was working in the yard, in her new herb bed bounded by small, symmetrical hunks of concrete.
“Mary Jane,” I said, “you won’t believe the prize rubble over at the church.”
She fell out laughing. “Keith was so happy when I quit forcing him to pick up broken concrete,” she said. “I don’t know if I can break his heart, but I’ve got to go and look.”
Somebody else’s ramp, boxes in the trash, pallets, and rubble. Dogwoods, geese, kittens. Harsh words, misdeeds, a helping hand, a kind remark. Be warned. If you focus on it, you’re going to see it for a long, long, time.
In the German movie, Mostly Martha, Martha, the second-best chef in Hamburg, obsesses on her work to keep the emotional world at bay. All of that changes when her sister dies, and Martha must provide her orphaned niece with the love the child requires in order to heal. But healing love is unlimited, and Martha is unwillingly included in its cure. In the final scene, Martha’s therapist has cooked a dessert for Martha, following her instructions, but his effort falls short of perfection. “Did you do this, add this, stir just so?” Martha asks, trying to pinpoint the error. Finally she addresses the sugar. He had not use the kind she suggested. “You can taste the sugar I used?” he says. “Of course not,” she says. “I can taste the sugar you didn’t use.” And as it is with sugar, so it is with love. If my life is not quite sweet, perhaps I am tasting the love I haven’t used.
4-14-05
Pallets
Miss Fran wanted pallets for her garage and basement. Being twenty years younger and having truck access made me the get-it-girl. I quickly became pallet aware: Sears, Wal-Mart, the grocery store, the in-business plant nursery and the nursery for sale. Sears had pallets, sometimes, on Tuesday afternoons only, and we would have to come and get them before the mysterious pallet man swooped them up. Wal-Mart, the grocery store, and open plant nursery used theirs (those things cost twenty dollars apiece, the grocery man said). The For Sale telephone number on the closed nursery was wrong. I remembered years ago when all the pallets were free, behind every building to be snatched by teen-agers for bonfires; but no more. Finally the deli had five wooden pallets and two plastic ones, and the skinny young manager helped me load them because his momma would be mad at him if he didn’t. Other than being slightly taken back I was old enough to be somebody’s momma’s concern, I had netted the prize.
But I remained pallet aware. The neighbor who owned the auto parts store said she got them in on occasion, and was always happy to give them away. The For Sale sign and the pallets disappeared from the closed plant nursery. Today I went to the lumber yard. Back in the corner were haphazard stacks of pallets, plus some littering the edge of one of the tin buildings.
“Do you sell those pallets?” I asked the check-out clerk.
“No,” he said. “If you want some, ask Travis. He’s not here right now.”
Fran doesn’t need more pallets, but I’ve seen my lesson for today. If you want something, keep looking. Somewhere it’s waiting for you, in abundance.
4-16-05
Strawberries
For a while I’ve been eyeing the strawberries in the grocery. They are big and red and look very eatable. Next to them is a flat cake called Bavarian sponge cake. The package of strawberries is huge, and I have resisted. Until yesterday, in honor of delicious spring weather, when I went whole hog…strawberries, Bavarian sponge cake and whipped cream. After I got home, I waited until late afternoon. Then I sliced the berries, sprinkled them with a tiny bit of sugar (even though the berries were so large, and not real juicy, they were sweet), layered them on the cake, and topped it off with whipped cream. I could barely wait until I was seated to munch my first bite. And the cake was dry, tasteless and crumbly. Which brings us to today’s lesson…if you choose a poor foundation, no matter how much lush sweetness you layer on top, you’re going to be disappointed in the end.
4-16-07
Awareness
After my dad was paralyzed and we came home from the hospital, we badly needed a ramp. I cannot now remember how long it took us to get one. The men from his church group were going to build it, then the carpenter down the street. I read everything I could get my hands on concerning ramps. All I remember now is that the incline should be one inch of rise for each twelve inches of height, which means, I think, if your front door is two feet off the ground, you must have 24 feet of ramp. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of ramp. We finally hired the lumber yard to build it, and it was beautiful and liberating. My father’s been dead for two years now, the house sold, the wonderful ramp dismantled, but to this day I admire the fine slope of a well-built ramp.
When we cleared out my parents’ home of fifty years, I scrounged packing boxes for months. It’s still hard pass a good box wasted in the trash.
Recently it’s been pallets that I’ve been hunting for a friend. Though she’ll never require another pallet in this lifetime, I now note the location of every pallet I pass.
Busted up concrete. Yep. My neighbor landscaped her walks and flower beds with slabs of concrete, and I decided to do the same. While I don’t have the tenacity of my neighbor, I do have piles of concrete I’ve begged, and I think the guy who helped me in my yard a while, stole. Don’t ask. He’s not working for the city any more.
The church two blocks over is tearing down their original sanctuary, and I walk past it every day. A couple of days ago, I saw an amazing sight, and when I passed my neighbor’s house, she was working in the yard, in her new herb bed bounded by small, symmetrical hunks of concrete.
“Mary Jane,” I said, “you won’t believe the prize rubble over at the church.”
She fell out laughing. “Keith was so happy when I quit forcing him to pick up broken concrete,” she said. “I don’t know if I can break his heart, but I’ve got to go and look.”
Somebody else’s ramp, boxes in the trash, pallets, and rubble. Dogwoods, geese, kittens. Harsh words, misdeeds, a helping hand, a kind remark. Be warned. If you focus on it, you’re going to see it for a long, long, time.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Oil Change
January 20, 2003
My husband needed the oil in his car changed, and I volunteered to do it, squeezing the time in around my constant migration between Greenwood and Cleveland and all of the things that mostly never get done. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I wanted to do it quickly. Slam, blam, thank you, m’am….get in, get out, get on to something really important.
My irritation meter counter quivered on neutral as I pulled onto the rack at the lube-in-a-hurry place. It skittered up the negative scale when I couldn’t find the hood release. I rarely used his car, and didn’t know the location of the levers and dials.
I found the latch, and the hood popped open. The attendant who had directed me onto the rack with hand signals disappeared beneath it. I sat behind the wheel, closed my eyes and breathed in and out. I tried not to think of my unmade bed, the dirty kitty litter that remained one of the few household chores I still did at my own house, the bags of unread books I insisted on ferrying to and from my father’s house each week, the minutes ticking off the time before my father’s morning help was due to leave and I would need to be on duty. I tried not to think of all the things I had to do to survive, and, if my life was going to be worthwhile, all the things I needed to do but never got to.
On my in-breath, the attendant rapped on the window. “Need the mileage,” he told me.
I looked at the black square in the center of the instrument panel. Nothing there.
I rolled down the window. “Should I turn it on?” I said.
“Just click on the ignition,” he said, “don’t turn it over.”
I clicked the ignition, and we looked at the black square together. Nothing.
“You can click it one more time,” he said. He didn’t have a lisp, but a way of thickening his words that made him sound less than bright. My irritation flared. If I were going to give this place my time and money, they should give me an attendant who knew more than I did.
I clicked. Still nothing. The attendant reached in and turned the lights on. Nothing again. My lack of knowledge about the car frustrated me. I wanted to rev the engine to get the information he wanted, to be shed of my ignorance, to get my show on the road without any more minutes shaved out of it than necessary.
“Now I see it,” he said, his thick voice almost gleeful, as if we had pulled this chestnut out of the fire together.
I looked harder at the dark glass and could still see nothing. I squinted my eyes, waiting for numbers to cohere.
“Here,” he said, laughing and tapping to my left. Once I would have considered the stupid joy in his voice that of a slow man accomplishing a simple task with great difficulty, but in one glad instant I recognized the laughter. I knew Who was speaking to me. I knew a message was coming. I needed only to listen. With a deep thirst I drank in the foolishly beaming face.
“We was looking in the wrong place,” he grinned.
“So we were,” I answered with a rippling joy of my own.
My Brother grinned bigger. “I bet if we had started up the car,” he said, “we still couldn’t of seen it.” He tapped the odometer again. “Because we was looking in the wrong place the whole time.”
My husband needed the oil in his car changed, and I volunteered to do it, squeezing the time in around my constant migration between Greenwood and Cleveland and all of the things that mostly never get done. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I wanted to do it quickly. Slam, blam, thank you, m’am….get in, get out, get on to something really important.
My irritation meter counter quivered on neutral as I pulled onto the rack at the lube-in-a-hurry place. It skittered up the negative scale when I couldn’t find the hood release. I rarely used his car, and didn’t know the location of the levers and dials.
I found the latch, and the hood popped open. The attendant who had directed me onto the rack with hand signals disappeared beneath it. I sat behind the wheel, closed my eyes and breathed in and out. I tried not to think of my unmade bed, the dirty kitty litter that remained one of the few household chores I still did at my own house, the bags of unread books I insisted on ferrying to and from my father’s house each week, the minutes ticking off the time before my father’s morning help was due to leave and I would need to be on duty. I tried not to think of all the things I had to do to survive, and, if my life was going to be worthwhile, all the things I needed to do but never got to.
On my in-breath, the attendant rapped on the window. “Need the mileage,” he told me.
I looked at the black square in the center of the instrument panel. Nothing there.
I rolled down the window. “Should I turn it on?” I said.
“Just click on the ignition,” he said, “don’t turn it over.”
I clicked the ignition, and we looked at the black square together. Nothing.
“You can click it one more time,” he said. He didn’t have a lisp, but a way of thickening his words that made him sound less than bright. My irritation flared. If I were going to give this place my time and money, they should give me an attendant who knew more than I did.
I clicked. Still nothing. The attendant reached in and turned the lights on. Nothing again. My lack of knowledge about the car frustrated me. I wanted to rev the engine to get the information he wanted, to be shed of my ignorance, to get my show on the road without any more minutes shaved out of it than necessary.
“Now I see it,” he said, his thick voice almost gleeful, as if we had pulled this chestnut out of the fire together.
I looked harder at the dark glass and could still see nothing. I squinted my eyes, waiting for numbers to cohere.
“Here,” he said, laughing and tapping to my left. Once I would have considered the stupid joy in his voice that of a slow man accomplishing a simple task with great difficulty, but in one glad instant I recognized the laughter. I knew Who was speaking to me. I knew a message was coming. I needed only to listen. With a deep thirst I drank in the foolishly beaming face.
“We was looking in the wrong place,” he grinned.
“So we were,” I answered with a rippling joy of my own.
My Brother grinned bigger. “I bet if we had started up the car,” he said, “we still couldn’t of seen it.” He tapped the odometer again. “Because we was looking in the wrong place the whole time.”
Coyote
Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass. Marc Leeds, The Vonnegut Encyclopedia, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995, page 348
Thursday January 23, 2003
Sometimes the idiot at the head of the line is a chubby woman who has totally forgotten the McDonald’s breakfast menu. Usually it’s me. Usually I am either too easily distracted or way over focused, and strangers discover I am a clot in the artery of commerce.
I don’t have a job and a paycheck. All my money comes from the sweat of my husband’s or my father’s brow. My husband obsesses about retirement. In recent years his motto seems to be a penny pinched is more money in a meager retirement portfolio. My father worries that his savings will end before he does. Shopping for all us often becomes an art in juggling.
To complicate shopping, some things my dad needs are tax deductible, and I have to keep those separate from the ones which aren’t. Also I have set up a small account of my own just to keep track of my personal spending. A person ready to check out might spot me standing alone at the counter and make the mistake of thinking my line will be short and quick. Wrong. There could be at least four different transactions occurring at the register: my father’s, my father’s, mine and my husband’s, and mine.
Which is what happened at Wal-Mart the day after the blessing of grace at McDonald’s.
No one was around when I wheeled the basket up to the counter. I bought first Dad’s medical supplies, then his household goods, then the Warners’ pet supplies, all with different credit cards I had to fumble to find, making sure I used the right one, signing for each, then making sure I put the card back in the right purse pocket instead of dropping it on the floor. In my usual hurry, I was goading myself to juggle more artfully.
I carry cash to pay for my personal purchases…the pens and notebooks and paper I will scatter between my Cleveland household and the one in Greenwood. I have a small pocket in my tiny purse for the cards, but my cash is kept in a fold down flap pocket with ripped lining. The change slips under the lining and collects in a heavy mass on the backside of my purse. I never seem to find the time to get a new purse, or fix this one that works best for me in most ways.
The clerk rang up my goods, and not wanting to add any more coins to my extensive collection, I scrabbled for the correct change, thinking, as I always do when I dive for dimes, of my mother and my stepdaughter. My mother hated old ladies who hunted in their purses for pennies. My stepdaughter thought change was something poor people used.
I am a poor person; an almost old lady who digs through her purse. On Thursday I couldn’t stop myself as precious minutes whizzed past. With my hand creeping up behind the pocket lining, I saw my stepdaughter when she was young standing in the moonlight on the curb outside a Burger King. She looked at the change she had just received, shrugged, and then flung it in a graceful silver arc into the empty field in front of the car. I fussed at her then; now, I understand the relief of the gesture.
I threw some of my own pennies and nickels and quarters on the counter. Not quite right. I had to go back for more. What an idiot, I thought, and almost heard my mother hissing. Why am I doing this, I wondered, it doesn’t make any difference to anybody but me. I finally pieced out the correct change and pushed it toward the clerk before beginning my search for dollars.
“……know you,” I heard someone say behind me.
I looked up and was shocked to discover my line was at least seven customers deep. The speaker was a tall, neatly dressed black man who seemed to be standing with his mother. A woman about his mother’s age separated us.
“You know me?” I asked. For years people have remembered me long after I have lost any memory of a connection. Though I couldn’t place this man, I didn’t want to be rude.
He looked back right into my eyes. He seemed amused. “I know you’re stupid,” he said.
Well, wasn’t that obvious? Hadn’t I just been calling myself stupid for who knows how many lost minutes, seconded by my mother’s ghost and engaged in activity my stepdaughter at eight-years-old had outgrown? And now all these folks who probably counted exactly how many minutes I had lost were piled up behind me. I knew I should turn away, but since I had made eye contact with the man, neither thanking him nor ignoring him seemed the polite thing to do.
“I am stupid…,” I agreed, willing to make a joke of this as I pulled dollars out of my purse. I thought of all the stupid things I had done all of my life. Most of my major decisions have been absolutely stupid, not to count all the little daily stupid things I do. I almost laughed because this stranger could never imagine how deeply stupid I was. I thought all this even as I finished the sentence “ …but I don’t think you really know me well enough to know that.” I flung a wad of dollars on the counter to sort.
“I know you are stupid,” he said.
Now how do you get out of this one, I thought. I could feel the tiny splash of what could be a tidal wave of irritation, but ignoring him seemed more hostile than acknowledging him. “I agree,” I said, “but I don’t think Miss Manners would approve of your pointing that out in a public place.” Like Miss Manners would approve of my pointing out his breach of etiquette in a public place. The pained look of the two women between us made me think they wished Miss Manners were shopping there instead of the two of us. I know I did. I teased out what I hoped was the right domination of bills. I pushed them toward the clerk. “Is that right?” I asked.
The clerk flashed an edgy smile as she picked them up.
“You are stupid,” he said. “You could have handed the lady your money.”
I looked back at the black man in line. He didn’t look crazy or as if he were packing a gun. He didn’t even look angry, so why was he doing this? I looked at the clerk sorting the money into the drawer. She was black, too. In Greenwood a year or so back the letters to the editor had hotly debated the issue of white customers refusing to touch the hands of black clerks. Was that what this was about? Had this very nice looking man confused my whole stupid life gestalt with racism?
The clerk handed me my receipt. I don’t know if our hands touched, but I was closer to getting the hell out of Dodge.
“I don’t know you,” the man said one more time in a voice that boomed over our heads, “but I know you are stupid.”
I was confused. What was I supposed to do now? When had the peace of McDonald’s departed? How had it arrived in the first place? I had refused to fight for a banana. But this guy and I both had our hands on the banana. Anything I could think of doing seemed like jerking harder.
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God, said the Voice in my head, the Voice that doesn’t debate or incite, the Voice with stillness and space around it. God reads Kurt Vonnegut? This was peculiar all right, but what were the travel suggestions? And what about all that peace-of-God stuff?
Okay, Buster, I thought, you asked for it. You’re gonna get what should be the answer.
I looked my tormentor in the eye. “Oh, you do know me,” I said. His eyes were, I swear, merry. “And I know you.” Everyone around us were faded as ghosts. He seemed to glow like butter. I delivered my benediction like a bludgeon. “And may the peace of God go with you.” And may it go with me, I silently pleaded. Please may it go with me.
Though I couldn’t hear anything, just before I turned back to the register, it looked as if he were laughing. And not knowing why, I wanted to laugh with him.
For the love of Christ, I thought as quick anonymous hands loaded my cart, Jesus-is- trying-to-love you is not the peace of God. But even if I had not been able to step back now, it seemed possible next time, or the next. It felt as if I had released some unnamed burden. As I left the store I could see the man’s smiling eyes and the buttery glow of his skin. I could feel the unuttered laughter floating freeform around us.
I thought of Coyote, of Raven, of the old Trickster who comes to devil you and leaves you with a gift. I was irritated, frustrated, tickled. I was happy. What a great joke, I thought, not quite knowing what the joke was. I wanted to share it with my teacher, but I was afraid if I waited for the man in the line to leave the store, I would find my teacher was already gone, and I would just convince some stranger I was as crazy in a parking lot as I had been stupid at a check-out counter.
This time I hadn’t been able to step back, but the blessing came anyway. I could feel it flowing through me. And I had been right about one thing. I did know the man in the line. With gratitude and laughter, I will know my Brother forever.
Thursday January 23, 2003
Sometimes the idiot at the head of the line is a chubby woman who has totally forgotten the McDonald’s breakfast menu. Usually it’s me. Usually I am either too easily distracted or way over focused, and strangers discover I am a clot in the artery of commerce.
I don’t have a job and a paycheck. All my money comes from the sweat of my husband’s or my father’s brow. My husband obsesses about retirement. In recent years his motto seems to be a penny pinched is more money in a meager retirement portfolio. My father worries that his savings will end before he does. Shopping for all us often becomes an art in juggling.
To complicate shopping, some things my dad needs are tax deductible, and I have to keep those separate from the ones which aren’t. Also I have set up a small account of my own just to keep track of my personal spending. A person ready to check out might spot me standing alone at the counter and make the mistake of thinking my line will be short and quick. Wrong. There could be at least four different transactions occurring at the register: my father’s, my father’s, mine and my husband’s, and mine.
Which is what happened at Wal-Mart the day after the blessing of grace at McDonald’s.
No one was around when I wheeled the basket up to the counter. I bought first Dad’s medical supplies, then his household goods, then the Warners’ pet supplies, all with different credit cards I had to fumble to find, making sure I used the right one, signing for each, then making sure I put the card back in the right purse pocket instead of dropping it on the floor. In my usual hurry, I was goading myself to juggle more artfully.
I carry cash to pay for my personal purchases…the pens and notebooks and paper I will scatter between my Cleveland household and the one in Greenwood. I have a small pocket in my tiny purse for the cards, but my cash is kept in a fold down flap pocket with ripped lining. The change slips under the lining and collects in a heavy mass on the backside of my purse. I never seem to find the time to get a new purse, or fix this one that works best for me in most ways.
The clerk rang up my goods, and not wanting to add any more coins to my extensive collection, I scrabbled for the correct change, thinking, as I always do when I dive for dimes, of my mother and my stepdaughter. My mother hated old ladies who hunted in their purses for pennies. My stepdaughter thought change was something poor people used.
I am a poor person; an almost old lady who digs through her purse. On Thursday I couldn’t stop myself as precious minutes whizzed past. With my hand creeping up behind the pocket lining, I saw my stepdaughter when she was young standing in the moonlight on the curb outside a Burger King. She looked at the change she had just received, shrugged, and then flung it in a graceful silver arc into the empty field in front of the car. I fussed at her then; now, I understand the relief of the gesture.
I threw some of my own pennies and nickels and quarters on the counter. Not quite right. I had to go back for more. What an idiot, I thought, and almost heard my mother hissing. Why am I doing this, I wondered, it doesn’t make any difference to anybody but me. I finally pieced out the correct change and pushed it toward the clerk before beginning my search for dollars.
“……know you,” I heard someone say behind me.
I looked up and was shocked to discover my line was at least seven customers deep. The speaker was a tall, neatly dressed black man who seemed to be standing with his mother. A woman about his mother’s age separated us.
“You know me?” I asked. For years people have remembered me long after I have lost any memory of a connection. Though I couldn’t place this man, I didn’t want to be rude.
He looked back right into my eyes. He seemed amused. “I know you’re stupid,” he said.
Well, wasn’t that obvious? Hadn’t I just been calling myself stupid for who knows how many lost minutes, seconded by my mother’s ghost and engaged in activity my stepdaughter at eight-years-old had outgrown? And now all these folks who probably counted exactly how many minutes I had lost were piled up behind me. I knew I should turn away, but since I had made eye contact with the man, neither thanking him nor ignoring him seemed the polite thing to do.
“I am stupid…,” I agreed, willing to make a joke of this as I pulled dollars out of my purse. I thought of all the stupid things I had done all of my life. Most of my major decisions have been absolutely stupid, not to count all the little daily stupid things I do. I almost laughed because this stranger could never imagine how deeply stupid I was. I thought all this even as I finished the sentence “ …but I don’t think you really know me well enough to know that.” I flung a wad of dollars on the counter to sort.
“I know you are stupid,” he said.
Now how do you get out of this one, I thought. I could feel the tiny splash of what could be a tidal wave of irritation, but ignoring him seemed more hostile than acknowledging him. “I agree,” I said, “but I don’t think Miss Manners would approve of your pointing that out in a public place.” Like Miss Manners would approve of my pointing out his breach of etiquette in a public place. The pained look of the two women between us made me think they wished Miss Manners were shopping there instead of the two of us. I know I did. I teased out what I hoped was the right domination of bills. I pushed them toward the clerk. “Is that right?” I asked.
The clerk flashed an edgy smile as she picked them up.
“You are stupid,” he said. “You could have handed the lady your money.”
I looked back at the black man in line. He didn’t look crazy or as if he were packing a gun. He didn’t even look angry, so why was he doing this? I looked at the clerk sorting the money into the drawer. She was black, too. In Greenwood a year or so back the letters to the editor had hotly debated the issue of white customers refusing to touch the hands of black clerks. Was that what this was about? Had this very nice looking man confused my whole stupid life gestalt with racism?
The clerk handed me my receipt. I don’t know if our hands touched, but I was closer to getting the hell out of Dodge.
“I don’t know you,” the man said one more time in a voice that boomed over our heads, “but I know you are stupid.”
I was confused. What was I supposed to do now? When had the peace of McDonald’s departed? How had it arrived in the first place? I had refused to fight for a banana. But this guy and I both had our hands on the banana. Anything I could think of doing seemed like jerking harder.
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God, said the Voice in my head, the Voice that doesn’t debate or incite, the Voice with stillness and space around it. God reads Kurt Vonnegut? This was peculiar all right, but what were the travel suggestions? And what about all that peace-of-God stuff?
Okay, Buster, I thought, you asked for it. You’re gonna get what should be the answer.
I looked my tormentor in the eye. “Oh, you do know me,” I said. His eyes were, I swear, merry. “And I know you.” Everyone around us were faded as ghosts. He seemed to glow like butter. I delivered my benediction like a bludgeon. “And may the peace of God go with you.” And may it go with me, I silently pleaded. Please may it go with me.
Though I couldn’t hear anything, just before I turned back to the register, it looked as if he were laughing. And not knowing why, I wanted to laugh with him.
For the love of Christ, I thought as quick anonymous hands loaded my cart, Jesus-is- trying-to-love you is not the peace of God. But even if I had not been able to step back now, it seemed possible next time, or the next. It felt as if I had released some unnamed burden. As I left the store I could see the man’s smiling eyes and the buttery glow of his skin. I could feel the unuttered laughter floating freeform around us.
I thought of Coyote, of Raven, of the old Trickster who comes to devil you and leaves you with a gift. I was irritated, frustrated, tickled. I was happy. What a great joke, I thought, not quite knowing what the joke was. I wanted to share it with my teacher, but I was afraid if I waited for the man in the line to leave the store, I would find my teacher was already gone, and I would just convince some stranger I was as crazy in a parking lot as I had been stupid at a check-out counter.
This time I hadn’t been able to step back, but the blessing came anyway. I could feel it flowing through me. And I had been right about one thing. I did know the man in the line. With gratitude and laughter, I will know my Brother forever.
Next
January 15, 2003
Desperate for my first complete cup of coffee, I stood in a clutch of McDonald’s customers. Six of us milled in front of the counter, half hanging back in a quasi-line in front of the one open cash register. Six customers in front of the counter, six employees behind it and only one person taking orders.
A chubby woman directly in front of the cash register two-stepped to the right. “I don’t know what I want,” she giggled as she looked up to ponder the menu board.
It’s always the same menu! snapped the voice in my head. How can you not know what you want?
In front of the counter we stood on hold, reading the selections with her, except for a young man holding a Styrofoam container and repeating the third time, “But I ordered the Big Breakfast Deluxe, not the Big Breakfast.” Behind the counter the woman dressed in the mustard brown manager’s uniform gazed bleakly over our heads before turning her back to fish out a rack of hash browns.
Jeez, I thought amid the sizzle of grease and the alarm of the buzzers, it’s never going to be my turn.
Those few morning hours should be my time, the only time of the day when someone else is responsible, but the morning help had been a no-show. Instead of drinking a second or a third cup of coffee at home while I read or worked on some writing of my own, I was the one who mixed Dad’s medicine and waited for it to slowly drain down his feeding tube, bathed and lotioned him, did his range of motion with the legs he could not feel, diapered and dressed him, hoisted him into his wheel chair, combed his hair, gave him his glass of Ensure to drink while I threw my clothes on, warmed the van, worked the lift, and drove us to McDonald’s. I had barely combed my own hair. And when we returned home there would be beds to be changed, clothes to be washed, more diapers, not to count the time Daddy just needed company, a body sitting next to him at the table or by the bed with no space in my brain for solitude and reflection.
Dad in his wheel chair was at the table catty-cornered to the entrance where some of his cronies meet six out of seven days a week, for that hour from nine to ten o’clock sharp. While I hadn’t had time to bath or brush my teeth, if the folks in the McDonald’s breakfast crowd got their act together I might have time to read, or contemplate the spiritual nature of life, or at the very least, consume one whole cup of coffee before the rest of the day consumed me. I didn’t just need caffeine. I needed what little time that could be my own to be mine. I needed my turn.
A graying man who had been aimlessly off to the left drifted vaguely into line in front of me. Not fair. He needed to do his wait in purgatory with the rest of us. My inclination was to side-step him, do a little body block that would inch me forward and reward me with an extra minute or two alone at a table where I could close the world out. It was a Clara Pilcher moment.
Clara was a little old lady at a day treatment program where I worked years ago. She had been sent there from the nursing home next door for stealing food from the cafeteria. We were supposed to behavior modify her into being a more acceptable citizen, only we were constantly busy and our clients’ lunches were in easy access on a table in the front of our own kitchen. “Clara ate Ruby’s sandwich and she’s leaving with Ruby’s banana,” someone tattled as I was passing from my office through the kitchen. Clara and I met in the doorway, blocking staff members and other clients on the move. I towered half a foot over Clara, who had the pink pudginess of a spinster princess. No space between the door frame for behavior modification. “That’s Ruby’s banana,” I said. “You need to give it back.” “No,” Clara vowed. I am sure this exchange occurred more than once, and somehow both Clara and I were holding on to the banana. It was fairly firm and did not squish. I don’t know how many times I yanked up and she yanked down, while the crowd encouraged me and admonished Clara. They knew fair.
Suddenly I woke up.
I was fighting an old woman over a banana.
I let go.
Only the crush of the spectators kept Clara from toppling to the floor. I know she ate Ruby’s banana, and Ruby got a free lunch on the center. I don’t know how long Clara kept coming, or what we did about the bagged lunches. I know I vowed never again to wrestle an old lady for a banana.
For me it has been a metaphor with endless applications. That Wednesday, thanks to Clara, I didn’t body block the gentleman to my left.
I stepped back.
Not with graciousness, but with an aggravation that scoured like grit on my day. So what if by the time I got my coffee it would be time to leave. So what if I went unread as well as unwashed. So what if my life was filled with longer stops than starts, and there was always some idiot at the head of the line overwhelmed by the mystery of McDonald’s breakfast menu.
“See,” said the guy opening the Styrofoam container. “It’s not the Deluxe.”
Your only function is to extend peace, said the Voice in my head.
This message I had read many times in many books, a message that sounded true, that should be true, but somehow never penetrated the cowl of anxiety that must have swaddled me in the womb, so long it had been with me. But on this Wednesday a Voice that sounded like my voice, the one that herded my grievances and exacted scores with the dim tenacity of an English sheepdog, said, “You’re only function is to extend peace.”
And it made sense.
I laughed.
How simple.
My only function was to extend peace.
Nothing had changed, but a heaviness had fallen away from the counter section of McDonald’s. Everything was somehow lighter…the clatter, the movement of the bodies, even the quality of the air.
I stood in line and relaxed.
My mind tried to take up the threads of worry that I use to harness my life. All the needs and wants and shoulds and oughts would come later, but right here, right now, they were not my concern.
My only function was to extend peace.
Peace to the woman who had finally made up her mind. Peace to the line-breaker. Peace to the manager in her ugly uniform who directed her workers in a choreography with the single purpose of moving food from the back out front to us. Peace to the young man who didn’t get the Deluxe he wanted. Peace to me.
Briefly, in the midst and muddle of life, I woke up.
I knew it wouldn’t last for, oh, maybe the rest of my life. But this morning it was my turn. Our turn.
And I was glad.
Desperate for my first complete cup of coffee, I stood in a clutch of McDonald’s customers. Six of us milled in front of the counter, half hanging back in a quasi-line in front of the one open cash register. Six customers in front of the counter, six employees behind it and only one person taking orders.
A chubby woman directly in front of the cash register two-stepped to the right. “I don’t know what I want,” she giggled as she looked up to ponder the menu board.
It’s always the same menu! snapped the voice in my head. How can you not know what you want?
In front of the counter we stood on hold, reading the selections with her, except for a young man holding a Styrofoam container and repeating the third time, “But I ordered the Big Breakfast Deluxe, not the Big Breakfast.” Behind the counter the woman dressed in the mustard brown manager’s uniform gazed bleakly over our heads before turning her back to fish out a rack of hash browns.
Jeez, I thought amid the sizzle of grease and the alarm of the buzzers, it’s never going to be my turn.
Those few morning hours should be my time, the only time of the day when someone else is responsible, but the morning help had been a no-show. Instead of drinking a second or a third cup of coffee at home while I read or worked on some writing of my own, I was the one who mixed Dad’s medicine and waited for it to slowly drain down his feeding tube, bathed and lotioned him, did his range of motion with the legs he could not feel, diapered and dressed him, hoisted him into his wheel chair, combed his hair, gave him his glass of Ensure to drink while I threw my clothes on, warmed the van, worked the lift, and drove us to McDonald’s. I had barely combed my own hair. And when we returned home there would be beds to be changed, clothes to be washed, more diapers, not to count the time Daddy just needed company, a body sitting next to him at the table or by the bed with no space in my brain for solitude and reflection.
Dad in his wheel chair was at the table catty-cornered to the entrance where some of his cronies meet six out of seven days a week, for that hour from nine to ten o’clock sharp. While I hadn’t had time to bath or brush my teeth, if the folks in the McDonald’s breakfast crowd got their act together I might have time to read, or contemplate the spiritual nature of life, or at the very least, consume one whole cup of coffee before the rest of the day consumed me. I didn’t just need caffeine. I needed what little time that could be my own to be mine. I needed my turn.
A graying man who had been aimlessly off to the left drifted vaguely into line in front of me. Not fair. He needed to do his wait in purgatory with the rest of us. My inclination was to side-step him, do a little body block that would inch me forward and reward me with an extra minute or two alone at a table where I could close the world out. It was a Clara Pilcher moment.
Clara was a little old lady at a day treatment program where I worked years ago. She had been sent there from the nursing home next door for stealing food from the cafeteria. We were supposed to behavior modify her into being a more acceptable citizen, only we were constantly busy and our clients’ lunches were in easy access on a table in the front of our own kitchen. “Clara ate Ruby’s sandwich and she’s leaving with Ruby’s banana,” someone tattled as I was passing from my office through the kitchen. Clara and I met in the doorway, blocking staff members and other clients on the move. I towered half a foot over Clara, who had the pink pudginess of a spinster princess. No space between the door frame for behavior modification. “That’s Ruby’s banana,” I said. “You need to give it back.” “No,” Clara vowed. I am sure this exchange occurred more than once, and somehow both Clara and I were holding on to the banana. It was fairly firm and did not squish. I don’t know how many times I yanked up and she yanked down, while the crowd encouraged me and admonished Clara. They knew fair.
Suddenly I woke up.
I was fighting an old woman over a banana.
I let go.
Only the crush of the spectators kept Clara from toppling to the floor. I know she ate Ruby’s banana, and Ruby got a free lunch on the center. I don’t know how long Clara kept coming, or what we did about the bagged lunches. I know I vowed never again to wrestle an old lady for a banana.
For me it has been a metaphor with endless applications. That Wednesday, thanks to Clara, I didn’t body block the gentleman to my left.
I stepped back.
Not with graciousness, but with an aggravation that scoured like grit on my day. So what if by the time I got my coffee it would be time to leave. So what if I went unread as well as unwashed. So what if my life was filled with longer stops than starts, and there was always some idiot at the head of the line overwhelmed by the mystery of McDonald’s breakfast menu.
“See,” said the guy opening the Styrofoam container. “It’s not the Deluxe.”
Your only function is to extend peace, said the Voice in my head.
This message I had read many times in many books, a message that sounded true, that should be true, but somehow never penetrated the cowl of anxiety that must have swaddled me in the womb, so long it had been with me. But on this Wednesday a Voice that sounded like my voice, the one that herded my grievances and exacted scores with the dim tenacity of an English sheepdog, said, “You’re only function is to extend peace.”
And it made sense.
I laughed.
How simple.
My only function was to extend peace.
Nothing had changed, but a heaviness had fallen away from the counter section of McDonald’s. Everything was somehow lighter…the clatter, the movement of the bodies, even the quality of the air.
I stood in line and relaxed.
My mind tried to take up the threads of worry that I use to harness my life. All the needs and wants and shoulds and oughts would come later, but right here, right now, they were not my concern.
My only function was to extend peace.
Peace to the woman who had finally made up her mind. Peace to the line-breaker. Peace to the manager in her ugly uniform who directed her workers in a choreography with the single purpose of moving food from the back out front to us. Peace to the young man who didn’t get the Deluxe he wanted. Peace to me.
Briefly, in the midst and muddle of life, I woke up.
I knew it wouldn’t last for, oh, maybe the rest of my life. But this morning it was my turn. Our turn.
And I was glad.
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